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(17) EKGs and PVCS
After the heart attack, something about my heartbeat didn’t feel the same, didn’t feel right. One day while I was attending the cardiac rehabilitation program at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, I saw visible confirmation of what felt wrong. I was hooked up to a computer monitor, and it showed occasional distinct downward spikes on the computer screen, several per minute. I noticed that each of these spikes occurred just after I felt a kind of missed drum beat in my heart. I was told matter-of-factly that these were “PVCs” –- pre-ventricular contractions.
I had lain awake at night, worrying about what these missed beats might mean, and waiting anxiously to see if they would happen again. This constantly irregular heartbeat was a fragmenting experience that left me in a perpetual state of anxiety and resignation. My mind concluded, This skipping in my heartbeat means I am about to die.
The cardiac nurse, who as far as I knew had never personally experienced PVCs, told me not to worry about them. She assured me that the electrical signal for the heart was merely finding a new path through the scarred tissue, and that this necessary rewiring was causing the pre-ventricular contractions. Right, I thought, Hakuna Matata . . . Don't worry, be happy. It took me months to finally get accustomed to this new offbeat rhythm in my heart, and it is still constantly with me.
Apparently, though, having irregular heartbeats doesn’t always mean that one is about to die. Hakuna Matata, indeed.
March 2, 2007
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